Fancyapint – GPS enabled search to tickle your fancy
Rating: Best use of LBS and mobile men can think of
Stumbled across a search engine right up my street here @ the S60 Summit - Fancyapint from Oxford Softworks. Naturally it’s a service aimed at drinkers visiting Central London. And it uses GPS.
It’s the company’s third major offering under the ‘nearme’ brand, with previous offerings including The Good Beer Guide and – if memory serves me correctly – a restaurant guide from Fodor.
The interesting point about the nearme services are that they utilise a variety of location technologies including CellID and GPS. It’s also possible to search the guide using postcodes or by the nearest Underground station, for example.
Oxford’s client runs on J2ME handsets (including the RIM Blackberry). This also means the software can run on a S60 handset with a built-in GPS capability such as the Nokia N95.
The company puts GPS to good use. The guide can show your current location as well as that of the pub or bar which you’ve just selected. You can even follow your progress on the map as you wend your weary way there.
Calvin Hutt, Oxford’s md, told me he has used a LBS aggregator, MX Telecom, to link into the CellID services offered by the UK mobile operators.
He also revealed that he has switched map supplier. The company won a prize in the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge so it’s swapped to NAVTEQ from Streetmap.
He also revealed he expects to be able to sell the software through Nokia Downloads, Orange World and Handango.
It’s also possible to download the software yourself via WAP push. I didn’t get the shortcode for Fancyapint given that it’s about three weeks away from launch.
However, if you text ‘Goodpub’ to 87080, you can get the Goodpub Guide. I’d put money on texting ‘pint’ to the same shortcode in a few weeks time will get you Fancyapint.
Quite frankly I can’t think of a better use for mobile search and GPS than this. For example, the reviews will stop theatre-goers accidentally wandering into a gay bar on Old Compton Street. Or help gay theatre-goers find the right place, of course.
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